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Brian Butterworth published on UK Free TV For the last six years, I have answered many thousands of personal emails that you have sent to UK Free TV.
Sadly, I am unable to offer this personal service at the moment.
Until I can restore this service, please can you leave any questions you have on an appropriate page, where they will be answered as soon as possible, or below, if you can't figure out where to ask.
I look forward to your questions!
Help with TV/radio stations?
In this section
Tuesday, 24 September 2013
D
Donna12:35 PM
Winkleigh
Hi KMJ: I tried manually re tuning but again nothing found in any channels to bring up the "SDN" group of channels. TV that is attached has got them so I daren't re tune that otherwise I guess I'll lose them there too. Am I looking at changing the aerial?
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Donna's: mapD's Freeview map terrainD's terrain plot wavesD's frequency data D's Freeview Detailed Coverage
C
C. Thornton2:34 PM
I find it very frustrating when I lose reception for more than 6 hours - 23rd September I had no ITV channels from mid afternoon until at least midnight when I went to bed. Reception today the 24th is intermittent. My post code is AL3 - Hertfordshire which I believe is served by the Crystal Palace transmitter. Why can BBC transmit ok and ITV can't?
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L
Liam10:15 PM
Peterborough
Liam:
Well, another evening of grief with the Sandy transmitter. Cleared all the channels and manually retuned - it made no difference (as expected).
Since the switchover, I have lost count of the number of times I have retuned. I have replaced the aerial, twice. Had new boosters. Taken off boosters, all at considerable cost for something i didn't ask for in the first place. It has all made no difference.
My hdr regularly fails to record, because the signal breaks up resulting in missed programmes that I really did want to see. I watch more on iplayer/itv player than I watch live and it makes me wonder why I fork out for a licence every year.
If you had such consistently bad service from a garage, you would go somewhere else. So I have. Virgin ordered. Goodbye Digital con trick. Out.
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Liam's: mapL's Freeview map terrainL's terrain plot wavesL's frequency data L's Freeview Detailed Coverage
K
KMJ,Derby10:27 PM
Liam: Sandy Heath is predicted to give variable reception at your location. Waltham, at least as far as the predictor goes, appears to be far more reliable.
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J
JLM,Ely11:38 PM
No main channels such as BBC1, 2, ITV and Channel 4 23/9/2013 and 24/9/2013. Poor to no signal on CH24 & CH27. Good to 100% signal on DVB CH52. I'm no expert on this and really struggling here. Weather warm for this time of year, cloudy, no rain. Checked my Technika Digital outdoor aerial physical connections which all seems sound. Symptoms suggest a transmitter fault (I cant see any faults on the web for this transmitter) or a booster fault (my Tesco aerial comes with a powered booster) because the signal seems to fade in and out over a 5-10 minute period.
Can boosters fail? How can I easily test this? Can aerials fail? I thought such aerials were passive and only failure could be connection, cabling or physical damage.
- - - - - - - details - - - - - -
CB6 3, Little Thetford, Cambridgeshire. Sandy Heath is 26 miles distant bearing 232. Outdoor aerial is 7m above ground level. It is mounted vertically almost exactly like the image shown here with the thin dimension pointing to the transmitter: Buy Technika Digital Outdoor Aerial from our Aerials range - Tesco.com (CB63YE)
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Wednesday, 25 September 2013
J
JLM,Ely12:24 AM
Ely
Further information: Aerial is a Technika Outdoor Aerial for Digital TV model ARLSSS1103. Freeview reception is via either a Panasonic TX-32LXD1 or a
BT Vision integrated digital terrestrial receiver model DIT7421/05.
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JLM,Ely's: mapJ's Freeview map terrainJ's terrain plot wavesJ's frequency data J's Freeview Detailed Coverage
I
Ian from notts7:21 AM
Nottingham
I was tuning a YouView box in yesterday, it has no manual tune but does give me a region selection.
The area is DE55 in Sth Derbyshire and the aerial is aligned to Waltham.
I had region choices of East MIds, London ! and Kent,
That answered it for me, even tho we should no longer suffer Atmospherics ?
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Ian's: mapI's Freeview map terrainI's terrain plot wavesI's frequency data I's Freeview Detailed Coverage
J
jb389:51 AM
JLM,Ely: Although aerials of the type mentioned do serve a purpose its really more in an aesthetic sense with regards to where they are mounted rather than technical, as their reception properties are no more than what would be achieved by connecting a very short piece of wire of say 30" or so arranged in a slim rectangular fashion and connected each end of the wire directly across the aerial input socket of any 30db booster, whereas a small (2'.6"/ 76cm) discreet log periodic type aerial fitted under the gutter or alternatively in the loft and coupled into a booster of around 20db or so would in most cases give far superior results.
However, if prior to the problem presently being experienced you been having perfectly satisfactory reception from this type of aerial then obviously something has changed and being something which "might" possibly be associated with the difficulty many are presently experiencing of either no, or alternatively poor, quality reception and caused by the prevailing atmospheric conditions enabling distant transmitters that operate on the same channels as local stations to be received and which corrupt the data stream from the local stations muxes, this in turn resulting in the tuner being unable to decode the signal hence no reception.
Although understandably many are reluctant to do this, but purely for the purpose of elimination you should make a local enquiry with a neighbour or whoever to find out if others are being similarly affected before concentrating on the fault possibly being associated with your aerial, although I will say that an intermittent fault in an aerials power supply (bad connection on the main smoothing capacitor) can result in a form of intermittent fading then rising.
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J
JLM,Ely11:11 AM
*SOLVED* (at least daytime reception)
@jb38. Thank you for your detailed response.
Firstly, my apologies. It seems we have been having fog in the area. Not just cloudy no rain as I at first stated.
Secondly, I looked up the Sandy Heath transmitter information from here UK digital TV reception predictor which suggested that the transmitter was horizontally polarised. I adjusted the aerial so that the longest dimension was pointed at the transmitter which, according to the Technika instruction leaflet, is horizontal polarisation.
Prior to the adjustment, auto-tune (BT Vision-->Settings-->TV Settings-->Add Channels to TV Guide) on the BT Vision box used to find around 70 channels and signal strength and quality varied. After changing the polarisation, the BT Vision box found 144 channel and all the channels checked so far are showing 100% signal strength and quality. Specifically, BBC 1, 2, 3 & 4 on 522MHz and ITV 1 & 2, Channels 4 & 5 on 498MHz all showing 100% signal strength and 100% signal quality (via the -->DTI Signal Strength on the BT Vision box).
So, the problem may be solved. I will re-post after 7 pm this evening in case it is different after sunset. (CB63YE)
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J
JLM,Ely9:46 PM
Ely
Solved. See above.
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JLM,Ely's: mapJ's Freeview map terrainJ's terrain plot wavesJ's frequency data J's Freeview Detailed Coverage
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